Kevin72

To further bastardize an already bastardized and somewhat controversial dish (see Adam's link for an interesting thread from the cooking board), I combined the elements of Kramer's recipe with those found in Ada Boni's Italian Regional Cooking book, Culinaria:Italy, and Marlena di Blasi's Regional Foods of Northern Italy cookbook. All three of the latter are nearly identical, and do offer prawns/shrimp and eggs. The madeira and cognac comes from Kramer's book; the other three sources do indeed use white wine for the primary braise, then either finish it with lemon juice (Boni and Culinaria) or again, cognac (di Blasi).

Umm, I'm passing along my mailing address to you.

Lombardia is definitely what we'll be doing in February. I must say, though, that I still like the idea of everyone voting on where we head. I think if we go the quarterly route, it helps cut down a little on doing all the legwork. Maybe instead of taking up thread space, especially if we're going to break these up into region-only cooking threads, we should move the votes to PMs and I'll just make an announcement at the beginning of the last month of that quarter. It's really not that much more work for me to tally the votes, and I like the more organic process that emerges as a result. Plus I want to avoid just rerunning the regions or the order that I did last year. It allows for more contribution that way instead of me (or me and Hathor) dictating where we go. Though I guess with voting via PM that does take some of the open discussion element out of it.

Saturday night was a sort of "greatest hits" dinner party for my wife's work friends. It was quite a challenge for me as I've gotten neurotically attached to to the definitely ordered meals of the past year: antipasto, primo, secondo, contorni. This one we wanted alot more casual, easy to eat kind of food. I still think I went too esoteric. None of it was Piemontese; it skewed heavily Umbrian and Tuscan, including the ribs and this pasta rottolo. I also made baked ziti with grilled eggplant and bruschetta with three toppings: kale, beans and sundried tomatoes, and braised portabellos. I include this entry only to say that the pasta rottolo is normally topped with bechamel, and I augmented it with the leftover fonduta. "Is that fonduta?" People kept asking me when they sampled the pasta. Well, no, no one said that.

Sunday night’s meal began with a primo of risotto all’vino rosso. It was served a little more al’onda than the Piemontese prefer their risotti. I’ve made a risotto with red wine before, but the wine itself was much less an element of the dish than it was here, where it constituted the bulk of the cooking liquid. The result was concentrated and intensely flavored risotto. The secondo was pollo Marengo, braised chicken that is a favorite of both the Piemontese and its bordering area in France. This is the dish that Napoleon’s chef, according to folklore, scrounged up from the countryside after a decisive battle. Chicken is slowly braised with mushrooms and tomatoes (though supposedly the chef originally just fried the chicken), along with cognac and Madeira wine, then removed and set aside. Using the same pan, you sauté some bread in the drippings from the dish, then fry some eggs to top the bread, and finally finish with shrimp, standing in for freshwater prawns that were originally used. My wife really enjoyed this one; there’s certainly a lot going on in the dish and different flavors to try together.

Friday night’s meal was a combo of two polenta recipes in Matt Kramer’s Passion for Piedmont: polenta with baccala topped with “acciughe verde” sauce. This was the last of the baccala fillets from Christmas and finally, I cooked it right. Not too firm still, not overly salty, nor was is flaccid and falling apart, either. It was a very simple condimento simmered with yellow onions and a touch of water. To top the whole dish, acciughe verde, “green anchovies”, a sauce involving three of Piemonte's beloved flavors: anchovies, garlic, and vinegar, pulsed together with parsley. Stirring a little of that into the polenta created a new, unusual flavor.

Hmm, that even takes the idea a bit further. So maybe one thread dedicated just to the cuisine of Piemonte, one to Lombardia, etc? Then it stays open and we can contribute more in subsequent months of cooking?

Also, and I hope he doesn't mind me doing this, but NathanP ran an interesting proposal by me: A new thread each month. As Pontormo pointed out, just one month is already at 6 pages and will likely hit 8-10 by the end of the month. By the end of the year, the thread could be a 120 pages or more at the same rate! So we just start a new thread each month, that way everything can be kind of succinct and relatively confined.

All right, so, how about this: Q1's obviously shot. But at the beginning of the last month before the new quarter, we start voting for the regions we want for the upcoming quarter. Then we'll just go by what got the most votes, second most, and third most votes and go from there. So, for the rest of this quarter, Lombardia has the most votes so far so that'll go up in February. Friuli and Trentino, I believe, are neck and neck for third, so whichever of those two comes out on top will be up for March. At the beginning of March, we then start voting for the regions we'll be wanting for April, May, and June.

And I thought monkfish were scary looking . . . that thing is positively nightmarish. Thanks for the closeups on the teeth, too. Is the cheek and head meat what it's prized for? Did you use the fillets for something else?

Fantastic work, Chufi! Between all that great Dutch cooking and your work in this thread, there's some good eating going on in your house!

Well, welcome to the bittersweet world of doing this project. At month's end, there's always that lingering look back on dishes you didn't get to, but then it's balanced by excitement for a new region. And, hey, there's always NEXT year!

Do this technique I picked from a >ahem< French cooking show: add more wine into the sauce right at the end off the heat after you've reduced the braising liquids. And hey, no accusations on ballot box stuffing here! Just reiterating everyone's votes to date.

And, yes, not to get pushy but we're on the final third of the month and we've only gotten four votes in for February: April's voted before on one of the four left out from the other thread: Lombardia, Sardinia, Trentino, or Molise, and now again on Friuli or Lombardia. Two more votes for a Northern Region from FoodMan and NathanP. Eden has voted on Le Marche. If you need a map to refer to, don't forget that Megan posted one on the first page, with all the regions labelled.

How'd you make the brasato? What wine did you use, cut of beef, how long did it cook, etc? Contorni? Those cookies look fantastic, I love the shapes you got out of them. Far more pastry skill than I could muster!

I've been drinking quite a few Barberas this month myself and don't see myself splurging on Barolo or Barbaresco. Again rather refreshingly, Matt Kramer in Passion for Piedmont admits that Barberas are his preferred wine from this region.

These are fantastic write ups and I'm quite enjoying your discoveries.

My understanding of Val d'Aosta is that its geography and relative isolation has always made it a fairly autonomous region that even when it was attached to Piemonte was allowed more or less an independent reign. Somewhere along the line they must have just finalized it and granted it full "region-hood". And, from what I can discern from the scraps of information out there, it is indeed much more Swiss and alpine in nature than anything: lots of whole grain breads, cabbage, and game is a dominant meat. I've made that pasta dish (sounds similar to pizzoccheri, which uses savoy cabbage instead of chard) before and it was a hit. Very fragile noodle, though; they tore easily and just fell apart when I hung the sheets to dry before cutting them. I am thinking of some sort of pasta dish to use up what's left; though since I posted the meal I've used some on the morning eggs to great effect, and last night dipped into it for my dinner. I poured some on a leftover pepper sformato and, while Kramer says that fonduta often goes over sformati, I think this matching was the wrong choice. So actually now there's not all that much left. But I did, earlier, think of possibly tossing it with tagliatelle and baking it, so we're on the same wavelength! I haven't. Christmas was very good to me this year, cookbook-wise, and I wrapped up all the regional books I had been aware of until you cited this one. I'll need to finish all of those before I'd want to move on.

Milan/Lombardia have the most famous version of osso bucco, but there are versions all over of course. Too bad you're not able to cook up a storm; all that skiing would probably whip up a perfect apetite for Piemonte fare!

That sucks. I know too well the pains of running around town explaining yourself and the ingredient over and over again, following false leads, etc. I guess maybe try artichokes instead? Can't help you on the farina department other than the already mentioned chickpea flatbread. You could do crepes, like I did here. Hold on to it though; as the thread goes further south there will be plenty of opportunities.

Much as I love Mario, I think you really have to be careful with his dessert recipes. Seems there's always a slipup in the ingredients that leads to disaster--his struffoli recipe in Holiday Food is notoriously off-mark. It's gotten to where I try crosschecking his recipes with similar ones I have on hand to make sure there isn't a screwup.

Another approach is to pop the pan with the garlic, butter, and oil into the oven on the lowest possible setting and cook it slowly that way. I've picked up this approach since aquiring a gas burner at the new house and it can never be set low enough to gradually cook garlic and infuse the oils. Isn't there a Balducci's or Dean & Delucca in the DC area? Can't remember which is which but we went into one in Alexandria last Christmas and saw cardoons there.

They still look great though. Mario Batali made agnolotti on his show once and related that the Piemontese hold them in such high regard that they are sometimes served completely "dry", no sauce whatsoever!

Last night we had the most un-photgenic tacchino tonnato. This is, of course, a much cheaper turkey modification of vitello tonnato, the famous Piemontese dish wherein a roast of veal is poached, cooled, then thinly sliced and layered with a sauce made of pureed capers, tuna, anchovies, mayonnaise, and a touch of the cooking liquid. I cut the turkey breast into cutlets, pounded them thin, then sautéed them in butter, giving them a more assertive flavor than poached meat would reach. In retrospect, I should have just poached the whole tenderloins, then sliced them. Otherwise, good stuff, and excellent with a nice salad alongside. Sadly, this cool dish was more appropriate for the weather outside than any of the braises I’ve done.

Sunday night was the foray into Val d’Aosta promised for the month. We started with a dish as beloved in Val d’Aosta as it is in neighboring Piemonte, which has incorporated it into its own cuisine: fonduta. Many who have written on these regions take pains to point out the difference between the Italian fonduta and Swiss and French fondues; notably the absence of any kind of liquor, the use of different cheeses, and for the Italians, the shaved truffles that go over the top right off the heat. I was pretty nervous about this dish, either it could wind up a rubbery, stringy mass or break up into a curd-riddled porridge. But you soak the cheese in milk overnight and the two blend seamlessly together, and use several egg yolks to thin the product out and bind it. It’s cooked over a double boiler, so there’s a slightly better chance of not scorching. I still didn’t use the $700/lb truffles at our local store—this is the same batch as last week, so now the rice has absorbed a lot of liquid an is unappealingly brown, the truffle is shriveled and coated in the rice. How are they not losing money on this? Nobody would buy at those prices and anybody who does would take pause at the quality they’re getting. Instead, I one of the cheeses I used had truffles in it (strocontore? Stroncontere? Similar texture to Fontina, which was also used), and I also augmented it with the remainder of the robiola with truffles I had opened last week. Here’s the product: So it turns out more sauce-like than cheese-like as Swiss fondue does. I’m not sure if this is an error on my part in cooking the dish, or even if the Swiss versions I’ve had were inaccurate and shouldn’t be so cheesey, either. To accompany the fonduta, a loaf of homemade dark wheat bread. Waverly Root writes of Val d’Aosta in his book The Foods of Italy: “Two elements in particular are basic to Aosta cooking: bread, country type, often black, usually made with a mixture of barley and hard wheat flours . . . and the stock pot always simmering on the back of the stove.” A solid complement to the dish. Now, of course, we have a rather alarming amount leftover, though. Anyone know what to do with it? Will it still be good, as in, safe to eat? I’m sure there will be loss of quality in reheating it, but I’m not going to chuck it, either. The secondo for the meal is based on description alone from Root’s book on how Aostani(?) cook chamois: “ . . . in Barolo wine, laced with a glass of grappa, and among the ingredients for its seasoning are garlic, carrots, celery, thyme, juniper, parsley, bay leaf, onions, cloves, cinnamon, olive oil, consommé, cream, and tomato extract.” Based on his description that chamois and the more rare ibex are in the same family as goat, I took a leap in a more mild direction and chose lamb for this dish. All of the ingredients save the grappa (I forgot it) and the cream (way too much, and it just didn’t seem to fit) went into the wine, which was briefly simmered to incorporate all those flavors. Once it had cooled, I poured it over the lamb and let it sit overnight, then patted the meat dry, browned it in butter, then added freshly chopped “trinity” aromatics, then the marinade, and popped it in the oven for 3 hours until the meat practically fell apart. To accompany it, I winged some contorni based on an extremely limited understanding of the cuisine: kale and mustard greens braised with lots of garlic in olive oil, and potatoes sautéed in lard and with a touch of stock added, then cooked away. Solid food, again missing appropriate weather outside. But I must say that after last week’s brasato al’vino rosso, this was probably too far down that same road. Maybe space them out a bit more. That’s one of my ongoing problems with this style of cooking, though; these are fairly standard ingredients in a red wine braise. When I made the beef shortribs that capped off cooking from Friuli last January, the braise liquid was identical, save for some ginger added in, and this tastes very similar, even with the different meat. Ah, well.